評論
打印
United States
美國版塊
Lexington
列克星頓專欄
A double negative
雙重否定
Hope turned out black voters for Barack Obama. Will fear bring them out against his successor?
是希望讓黑人選民們支持奧巴馬。那么害怕會驅使他們反對繼任者特朗普嗎？
It was interesting to recall, while Lexington was observing some canvassing of black North Carolinians last week, that only three months previously America had been convulsed by the biggest racial-justice protests since the 1960s. On the doorsteps of poor black neighbourhoods in Greenville and the countryside east of the city, nobody raised them.
筆者觀察到上周北卡羅來納州黑人舉辦了一些拉選票活動，有意思的是，憶起就在三個月之前，20世紀60年代以來最大規模的種族主義抗議活動震動美國。在格林維爾市和城市以東的鄉村的黑人社區，卻并沒有人發起拉選票活動。
Nor did the couple of dozen voters your columnist met—at the side of masked and PPE-clad Democratic activists—mention another milestone, Joe Biden’s decision to put a black woman on the ticket. Asked for their view of Kamala Harris, most of the targeted voters, who were all black and mostly women, merely nodded politely. One praised her “professionalism”; another the fact that she seemed “strong enough to back up Joe”. Beyond such bland statements, few of the voters even mentioned Mr Biden. But all said they were especially determined to vote for the Democratic candidate this year, because of Donald Trump.
筆者曾經遇到過幾十位選民，這些選民支持佩戴口罩和個人防護設備的民主黨活動人士，但他們也并未提及另一件里程碑事件，即喬·拜登決定讓一位黑人女性參選。筆者向一些選民詢問他們對卡馬拉·哈里斯的看法，這些選民都是黑人，且大多是女性，但大部分選民只是禮貌地點頭。一位選民稱贊她的“專業精神”；另一位選民稱贊她“堅定支持喬”。除了這些平淡的言論，幾乎沒有選民提到拜登。但所有人都表示，因為唐納德·特朗普，所以他們今年尤為堅定地投票支持民主黨候選人。
“Gotta get 45 out, that’s the only thing that matters,” said Mary Ellis, at her house in Greenville Heights, one of a row of single-storey dwellings thumping with music. “Everything I hear from him isn’t right,” said her neighbour, Magdalene Knight. “It scares me to think we’ve got a generation of young people watching his immorality,” said Ruby Perkins, a retired teacher, with a large “Thank you Jesus” sign outside her door. “That man lied to the nation about a pandemic. You’ve got to be demented to think he’s the answer.”
“我得把45轉的唱片找出來，這是唯一重要的事情，”瑪麗·埃利斯在她位于格林維爾高地的家中說道，這里有一排單層住宅，她就住在其中一間，屋子中充斥著音樂。她的鄰居莫德林·奈特表示：“我從特朗普那里聽到的一切都是不對的，”一位退休教師魯比·帕金斯說：“想到我們這一代年輕人都看著他的不道德行為，我感到很害怕，”她在門外掛著一個大大的“感謝耶穌”的牌子。“在疫情問題上，特朗普對美國撒謊了。他一定是瘋了。”
This should be music to Democratic ears. A huge majority of African- Americas will vote for Mr Biden, and they will do so for the main reason Democratic strategists have been inviting them to. They want the election to be a referendum on an unpopular president, not a choice between two old white men, and most of them made that determination long ago. “You could put up a flowerpot against Trump and we’d vote for the flowerpot,” said Betsy Wallace in rural Williamston, 30 miles to the north-east. Yet notwithstanding black voters’ overriding support for Mr Biden, they have recently emerged as one of his campaign’s biggest worries.
這對民主黨來說是好消息。絕大多數非裔美國人投票支持拜登，他們這樣做的主要原因是民主黨戰略家一直邀請他們投票。他們希望這次大選是對一位不得民心的總統進行全民公投，而不是從兩位年邁的白人之間進行選擇，大多數非裔美國人早就下定決心了。“你可以讓一個花瓶與特朗普在大選中對決，我們會投票支持花瓶的，”貝特西·華萊士在東北部30英里的威廉斯頓鄉下說。然而盡管拜登獲得黑人選民的壓倒性支持，但這些黑人選民最近卻成為拜登競選活動中最令人擔憂的問題之一。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
